Helga Aichinger (born 1937) is an Austrian artist, engraver, and illustrator.
She completed a course in calligraphy and typography at the School of Fine Arts in Linz (Kunstschule Linz). Since the early 1960s, Aichinger has worked extensively as a book illustrator and has also produced pastels, collages, and engravings. Her works have been exhibited in Vienna, Linz, Traun, Prague, Istanbul, and Ankara. She has participated in international group exhibitions, including those in Bologna, Bratislava, Belgrade, Beirut, and at the Menton Biennale.
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I think that my illustrations tell more about me and the goals of my work than a statement. By my work I want to inform children again and again about my world, to show them something of this world condensed in pictures and simple sentences, and to have them experience those things that daily give me joy, sometimes grief and sorrow, that always give, however, the treasures of a more profound life, a touch with all living things. To that end it is probably more important to have remained a child at heart, i.e., to have remained open and flexible, rather than to have children; to experience even in the smallest detail the enormity of the world; to view everything with a fresh outlook (as on the First Day).
I paint out of a joy for painting. I paint like the bird sings. I listen for the inaudible tone of tones, and I attempt to say what no word can express, to paint what no picture can convey. Very young children always understand me. I believe that the actual, the essential life is not to be found in the turmoil of city life, although one can also perceive it there when one knows where the sources are, and when one has an car for it. Whoever has experienced it can never lose it again. Again and again I seek the stillness to find myself there. I live as often and as long as I can in my house in the woods. Here one lives not only the pastoral life — there is also hard work, a severe winter, and problems with harvest.
From time to time exhibits, transactions with publishers or ceremonies in large cities are unavoidable. I like to travel, but I shy away from the official tumult and speeches. I have therefore decided in the future in such circumstances to allow myself to be represented by my besom [broom]. I am not very adept at interpreting myself. Thus my brush could really represent me quite well. A short time ago I read about a Japanese painter who had the same thought. My books and illustrations should speak for themselves: why should I say something more? Perhaps it happens sometimes that someone looks deeply into my works and sees something that is not at all perceptible. Perhaps my books help someone to develop in a way suitable to his own life. That is reward enough for me.
Amazon | Helga Aichinger
Books
I never saw…
I Never Saw… (1972) is a collaboration between poet Judson Jerome and illustrator Helga Aichinger. The book presents a series of short poems describing things a child sees in dreams—scenes that are imaginative, sometimes ordinary, sometimes unusual. Each poem is paired with Aichinger’s dark, dream-like paintings, where limited, carefully placed […]
